Τα μεταδεδομένα επικοινωνίας ως στοιχείο του επικοινωνιακού απορρήτου
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Μεταδεδομένα επικοινωνίας ; Επικοινωνιακό απόρρητοAbstract
The constitutionally guaranteed right to private communication is a prerequisite as well as an intersection point for the exercise of many other fundamental rights. Precisely because of its critical position in the international and national legal order, the issues related to its protection extend from the technical mode of operation of modern means of communication and end up in the institutional framework and its implementation.
An integral part of any communication, beyond the content itself, is its context, which is referred to as communication metadata. The communicators, the time, the duration, the geographical location are information produced by the means used and collected by the communication service providers in principle for the purposes of implementing a communication as well as billing it.
The history of the creation and use of metadata (in its general dimension) is old and concerns the facilitation of rapid identification and organization of information. In the course of history, precisely this quality of theirs, shifted the interest of the security services from the use of traditional monitoring methods (eavesdropping), to the analysis of a significant amount of communication metadata.
This information is particularly revealing both in relation to its content and in relation to the life profile of the communicators, findings which have also been confirmed at a research level. The distinction between content and metadata nowadays should be considered outdated.
The protection of communication metadata as a part of the privacy of communication is recognized both by jurisprudence and legislation, at the European and national level, although there are also opposing views.
The national institutional framework for the lifting of confidentiality as well as the manner of its implementation, cause serious concerns in relation to the satisfactory protection of the right to confidential communication. Taking into account the wide possibilities of drawing conclusions from the analysis of communication metadata, it seems that important gaps are left and the general framework of protection contradicts part of the jurisprudence of the ECtHR and the CJEU.